CRAM FOR SUCCESS – QUESTION TYPE BASED READING PRACTICE TESTS

MATCHING INFORMATION
QUESTIONS

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 1
When the Tulip Bubble Burst

Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants
can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers
usually bloom on scapes or sub-scapose stems that lack bracts. Most tulips produce only one flower
per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The showy,
generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed
tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near
the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue
(several tulips with “blue” in the name have a faint violet hue)

A. Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks
that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and
more sublime than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight-blue petals
topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland,
little was as desirable.

B. Around 1624, the Amsterdam man who owned the only dozen specimens was offered 3,000
guilders for one bulb. While there’s no accurate way to render that in today’s greenbacks, the sum was
roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. (A few years later, Rembrandt received
about half that amount for painting The Night Watch.) Yet the bulb’s owner, whose name is now lost
to history, nixed the offer.

C. Who was crazier, the tulip lover who refused to sell for a small fortune or the one who was willing
to splurge. That’s a question that springs to mind after reading Tulip mania: The Story of the World’s
Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by British journalist Mike Dash. In
recent years, as investors have intentionally forgotten everything they learned in Investing 101 in order
to load up on unproved, unprofitable dot- com issues, tulip mania has been invoked frequently. In this
concise, artfully written account, Dash tells the real history behind the buzzword and in doing so,
offers a cautionary tale for our times.

D. The Dutch were not the first to go gaga over the tulip. Long before the first tulip bloomed in
Europe-in Bavaria, it turns out, in 1559-the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers
of the Ottoman Empire. It was in Holland, however, that the passion for tulips found its most fertile
ground, for reasons that had little to do with horticulture.

E. Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few
years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce.
Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage
could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by
flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed tom by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living
beyond one’s means and the love of a long shot.

F. Enter the tulip. “It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how
different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,” says Dash.
“The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.”
Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound.
Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These
“florists,” or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply
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of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply
squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones,
or “offsets,” annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years.

G. Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators into the market. Weavers
and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in
Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip-even bulbs recently considered garbage-
could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders
could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulip mania reached its peak
during the winter of 1636-37, when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith
came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left
by then father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold
for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

H. Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb
auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had
spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips
evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-
hundredth that amount. Tulip mania is not without flaws. Dash dwells too long on the tulip’s migration
from Asia to Holland. But he does a service with this illuminating, accessible account of incredible
financial folly.

I. Tulip mania differed in one crucial aspect from the dot-com craze that grips our attention today:
Even at its height, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, well- established in 1630, wouldn’t touch tulips.
“The speculation in tulip bulbs always existed at the margins of Dutch economic life,” Dash writes.
After the market crashed, a compromise was brokered that let most traders settle then debts for a
fraction of then liability. The overall fallout on the Dutch economy was negligible. Will we say the
same when Wall Street’s current obsession finally runs its course?

Questions 1-5
The reading Passage has nine paragraphs A-I.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. Difference between bubble burst impacts by tulip and by high-tech shares

2. Spread of tulip before 17th century
3. Indication of money offered for rare bulb in 17th century
4. Tulip was treated as money in Holland
5. Comparison made between tulip and other plants

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 2
White mountain, green tourism

The French Alpine town of Chamonix has been a magnet for tourists since the 18th century. But today,
tourism and climate change are putting pressure on the surrounding environment. Marc Grainger
reports.

A. The town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc sits in a valley at 1,035 metres above sea level in the Haute-
Savoie department in south-eastern France. To the northwest are the red peaks of the Aiguilles Rouges
massif; to the south-east are the permanently white peaks of Mont Blanc, which at 4,810 metres is the
highest mountain in the Alps. It’s a typical Alpine environment, but one that is under increasing strain
from the hustle and bustle of human activity.

B. Tourism is Chamonix’s lifeblood. Visitors have been encouraged to visit the valley ever since it was
discovered by explorers in 1741. Over 40 years later, in 1786, Mont Blanc’s summit was finally
reached by a French doctor and his guide, and this gave birth to the sport of alpinism, with Chamonix
at its centre. In 1924, it hosted the first Winter Olympics, and the cable cars and lifts that were built in
the years that followed gave everyone access to the ski slopes.

C. Today, Chamonix is a modern town, connected to the outside world via the Mont Blanc Road
Tunnel and a busy highway network. It receives up to 60,000 visitors at a time during the ski season,
and climbers, hikers and extreme-sports enthusiasts swarm there in the summer in even greater
numbers, swelling the town’s population to 100,000. It is the third most visited natural site in the
world, according to Chamonix’s Tourism Office and, last year, it had 5.2 million visitor bed nights - all
this in a town with fewer than 10,000 permanent inhabitants.

D. This influx of tourists has put the local environment under severe pressure, and the authorities in the
valley have decided to take action. Educating visitors is vital. Tourists are warned not to drop rubbish,
and there are now recycling points dotted all around the valley, from the town centre to halfway up the
mountains. An internet blog reports environmental news in the town, and the ‘green’ message is
delivered with all the tourist office’s activities.

E. Low-carbon initiatives are also important for the region. France is committed to reducing its carbon
emissions by a factor of four by 2050. Central to achieving this aim is a strategy that encourages
communities to identify their carbon emissions on a local level and make plans to reduce them. Studies
have identified that accommodation accounts for half of all carbon emissions in the Chamonix valley.
Hotels are known to be inefficient operations, but those around Chamonix are now cleaning up their
act. Some are using low-energy lighting, restricting water use and making recycling bins available for
guests; others have invested in huge projects such as furnishing and decorating using locally sourced
materials, using geothermal energy for heating and installing solar panels.

F. Chamonix’s council is encouraging the use of renewable energy in private properties too, by making
funds available for green renovations and new constructions. At the same time, public- sector buildings
have also undergone improvements to make them more energy efficient and less wasteful. For
example, the local ice rink has reduced its annual water consumption from 140,000 cubic metres to
10,000 cubic metres in the space of three years.

G. Improving public transport is another feature of the new policy, as 80 percent of carbon emissions
from transport used to come from private vehicles. While the Mont Blanc Express is an ideal way to
travel within the valley - and see some incredible scenery along the route - it is much more difficult to
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arrive in Chamonix from outside by rail. There is no direct line from the closest airport in Geneva, so
tourists arriving by air normally transfer by car or bus. However, at a cost of 3.3 million euros a year,
Chamonix has introduced a free shuttle service in order to get people out of their cars and into buses
fitted with particle filters.

H. If the valley’s visitors and residents want to know why they need to reduce their environmental
impact, they just have to look up; the effects of climate change are there for everyone to see in the
melting glaciers that cling to the mountains. The fragility of the Alpine environment has long been a
concern among local people. Today, 70 percent of the 805 square kilometres that comprise Chamonix-
Mont-Blanc is protected in some way. But now, the impact of tourism has led the authorities to
recognise that more must be done if the valley is to remain prosperous: that they must not only protect
the natural environment better, but also manage the numbers of visitors better, so that its residents can
happily remain there.

Questions 1-5
The reading Passage has eight paragraphs A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1. a list of the type of people who enjoy going to Chamonix
2. reference to a system that is changing the way visitors reach Chamonix
3. the geographical location of Chamonix
4. mention of the need to control the large tourist population in Chamonix
5. reference to a national environmental target

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 3
Art to the aid of technology
What caricatures can teach us about facial recognition

A. Our brains are incredibly agile machines, and it is hard to think of anything they do more efficiently
than recognize faces. Just hours after birth, the eyes of newborns are drawn to facelike patterns. An
adult brain knows it is seeing a face within 100 milliseconds, and it takes just over a second to realize
that two different pictures of a face, even if they are lit or rotated in very different ways, belong to the
same person.

B. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of our gift for recognition is the magic of caricature-the fact that
the sparest cartoon of a familiar face, even a single line dashed off in two seconds, can be identified by
our brains in an instant. It is often said that a good caricature looks more like a person than the person
themselves. As it happens, this notion, counterintuitive though it may sound, is actually supported by
research. In the field of vision science, there is even a term for this seeming paradox-the caricature
effect-a phrase that hints at how our brains misperceive faces as much as perceive them.

C. Human faces are all built pretty much the same: two eyes above a nose that’s above a mouth, the
features varying from person to person generally by mere millimetres. So what our brains look for,
according to vision scientists, are the outlying features-those characteristics that deviate most from the
ideal face we carry around in our heads, the running average of every "visage" we have ever seen. We
code each new face we encounter not in absolute terms but in the several ways it differs markedly from
the mean. In other words, we accentuate what is most important for recognition and largely ignore
what is not. Our perception fixates on the upturned nose, the sunken eyes or the fleshy cheeks, making
them loom larger. To better identify and remember people, we turn them into caricatures.

D. Ten years ago, we all imagined that as soon as surveillance cameras had been equipped with the
appropriate software, the face of a crime suspect would stand out in a crowd. Like a thumbprint, its
unique features and configuration would offer a biometric key that could be immediately checked
against any database of suspects. But now a decade has passed, and face-recognition systems still
perform miserably in real-world conditions. Just recently, a couple who accidentally swapped
passports at an airport in England sailed through electronic gates that were supposed to match their
faces to file photos.

E. All this leads to an interesting question. What if, to secure our airports and national landmarks, we
need to learn more about caricature? After all, it's the skill of the caricaturist-the uncanny ability to
quickly distill faces down to their most salient features-that our computers most desperately need to
acquire. Clearly, better cameras and faster computers simply aren't going to be enough.

F. At the University of Central Lancashire in England, Charlie Frowd, a senior lecturer in psychology,
has used insights from caricature to develop a better police-composite generator. His system, called
EvoFIT, produces animated caricatures, with each successive frame showing facial features that are
more exaggerated than the last. Frowd's research supports the idea that we all store memories as
caricatures, but with our own personal degree of amplification. So, as an animated composite depicts
faces at varying stages of caricature, viewers respond to the stage that is most recognizable to them. In
tests, Frowd's technique has increased positive identifications from as low as 3 percent to upwards of
30 percent.

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G. To achieve similar results in computer face recognition, scientists would need to model the artist’s
genius even more closely-a feat that might seem impossible if you listen to some of the artists describe
their nearly mystical acquisition of skills. Jason Seiler recounts how he trained his mind for years,
beginning in middle school, until he gained what he regards as nothing less than a second sight. ‘A lot
of people think that caricature is about picking out someone’s worst feature and exaggerating it as far
as you can,' Seiler says. 'That’s wrong. Caricature is basically finding the truth. And then you push the
truth.' Capturing a likeness, it seems, has less to do with the depiction of individual features than with
their placement in relationship to one another. 'It's how the human brain recognizes a face. When the
ratios between the features are correct, you see that face instantly.’

H. Pawan Sinha. director of MIT's Sinha Laboratory for Vision Research, and one of the nation's most
innovative computer-vision researchers, contends that these simple, exaggerated drawings can be
objectively and systematically studied and that such work will lead to breakthroughs in our
understanding of both human and machine-based vision. His lab at MIT is preparing to
computationally analyze hundreds of caricatures this year, from dozens of different artists, with the
hope of tapping their intuitive knowledge of what is and isn’t crucial for recognition. He has named
this endeavor the Hirschfeld Project, after the famous New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

I. Quite simply, by analyzing sketches, Sinha lopes to pinpoint the recurring exaggerations in the
caricatures that most strongly correlate to particular ways that the original faces deviate from the norm.
The results, he believes, will ultimately produce a rank-ordered list of the 20 or so facial attributes that
are most important for recognition: 'It’s a recipe for how to encode the face,' he says. In preliminary
tests, the lab has already isolated important areas-for example, the ratio of the height of the forehead to
the distance between the top of the nose and the mouth.

J. On a given face, four of 20 such Hirschfeld attributes, as Sinha plans to call them, will be several
standard deviations greater than the mean; on another face, a different handful of attributes might
exceed the norm. But in all cases, it's the exaggerated areas of the face that hold the key. As matters
stand today, an automated system must compare its target faces against the millions of continually
altering faces it encounters. But so far, the software doesn't know what to look for amid this onslaught
of variables. Armed with the Hirschfeld attributes, Sinha hopes that computers can be trained to focus
on the features most salient for recognition, tuning out the others. ’Then.’ Sinha says, ’the sky is the
limit’.

Questions 1-6
The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. why we have mental images of faces that are essentially caricatures

2. mention of the length of time it can take to become a good caricaturist
3. an example of how unreliable current security systems can be
4. reference to the fact that we can match even a hastily drawn caricature to the person it represents
5. a summary of how the use of multiple caricatures has improved recognition rates in a particular field
6. a comparison between facial recognition and another well-established form of identification

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 4
Glow-worms

A. The glow-worm belongs to a family of beetles known as the Lampyridae or fireflies. The fireflies
are a huge group containing over 2000 species, with new ones being discovered all the time. The
feature which makes fireflies and glow-worms so appealing is their ability to produce an often dazzling
display of light. The light is used by the adult fireflies as a signal to attract a mate, and each species
must develop its own 'call-sign' to avoid being confused with other species glowing nearby. So within
any one area each species will differ from its neighbours in some way, for example in the colour or
pattern of its light, how long the pulses of light last, the interval between pulses and whether it displays
in flight or from the ground.

B. The firefly’s almost magical light has attracted human attention for generations. It is described in an
ancient Chinese encyclopaedia written over 2000 years ago by a pupil of Confucius. Fireflies often
featured in Japanese and Arabian folk medicine. All over the world they have been the inspiration for
countless poems, paintings and stories. In Britain, for example, there are plenty of anecdotes describing
how glow-worms have been used to read by or used as emergency bicycle lamps when a cyclist's
batteries have failed without warning. Early travellers in the New World came back with similar
stories, of how the native people of Central America would collect a type of click beetle and release
them indoors to light up their huts. Girls threaded them around their feet to illuminate the forest paths
at night.

Fireflies very similar to those we see today have been found fossilised in rocks which were formed
about 30 million years ago, and their ancestors were probably glowing long before then. It is
impossible to be sure exactly when and where the first firefly appeared. The highest concentrations of
firefly species today are to be found in the tropics of South America, which may mean either that this
is where they first evolved, or simply that they prefer the conditions there.

Wherever they first arose, fireflies have since spread to almost every part of the globe. Today members
of the firefly family can be found almost anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

C. As with many insects, the glow-worm's life is divided into four distinct stages: the egg, the larva
(equivalent to the caterpillar of a butterfly), the pupa (or chrysalis) and the adult. The glow-worm
begins its life in the autumn as a pale yellow egg. The freshly laid egg is extremely fragile but within a
day its surface has hardened into a shell. The egg usually takes about 35 days to hatch, but the exact
time varies according to the temperature, from about 27 days in hot weather to more than 45 days in
cold weather. By the time it is due to hatch, the glow-worm's light organ is fully developed, and its
glow signals that the egg will soon hatch.

After it has left the egg, the larva slowly grows from a few millimetres into the size and shape of a
matchstick. The larval stage is the only time the insect can feed. The larva devotes much of its life to
feeding and building up its food reserves so that as an adult it will be free to concentrate all its efforts
on the task of finding a mate and reproducing. Throughout its time as a larva, approximately 15
months, the glow-worm emits a bright light. The larva's light is much fainter than the adult female's but
it can still be seen more than five metres away.

In the final stage of a glow-worm's life, the larva encases itself in a pupa) skin while it changes from
the simple larva to the more complex adult fly. When the adult fly emerges from the pupa the male
seeks a female with whom it can mate. After mating, the female lays about 120 eggs. The adult flies

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have no mouth parts, cannot eat and therefore only live a few days. When people talk of seeing a glow-
worm they normally mean the brightly glowing adult female.

D. In some countries the numbers of glow-worms have been falling. Evidence suggests that there has
been a steady decrease in the British glow-worm population since the 1950s and possibly before that.
Possible causes for the decline include habitat destruction, pollution and changes in climate. Thousands
of acres of grassland have been built upon and glow-worm sites have become increasingly isolated
from each other. The widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers may also have endangered the glow-
worm. Being at the top of a food chain it is likely to absorb any pollutants eaten by the snails on which
it feeds. The effect of global warming on rainfall and other weather patterns may also be playing a part
in the disappearance of glow-worms. A lot more research will be needed, however, before the causes
of the glow-worm's gradual decline are clear.

E. Although glow-worms are found wherever conditions are damp, food is in good supply and there is
an over-hanging wall, they are most spectacular in caves. For more than 100 years the glow-worm
caves in New Zealand have attracted millions of people from all over the world. The caves were first
explored in 1887 by a local Maori chief, Tane Tinorau, and an English surveyor, Fred Mace. They built
a raft and, with candles as their only light, they floated into the cave where the stream goes
underground. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness they saw myriad lights reflecting off the water.
Looking up they discovered that the ceiling was dotted with the lights of thousands of glow-worms.
They returned many times to explore further, and on an independent trip Tane discovered the upper
level of the cave and an easier access. The authorities were advised and government surveyors mapped
the caves. By 1888 Tane Tinorau had opened the cave to tourists.

Questions 1-6
The reading Passage has five paragraphs A-E.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1. threats to the glow-worm
2. ways in which glow-worms have been used
3. variations in type of glow-worm
4. glow-worm distribution
5. glow-worms becoming an attraction
6. the life-cycle of a glow-worm

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 5
The Intersection of Health Sciences and Geography

A. While many diseases that affect humans have been eradicated due to improvements in vaccinations
and the availability of healthcare, there are still areas around the world where certain health issues are
more prevalent. In a world that is far more globalised than ever before, people come into contact with
one another through travel and living closer and closer to each other. As a result, super-viruses and
other infections resistant to antibiotics are becoming more and more common.

B. Geography can often play a very large role in the health concerns of certain populations. For
instance, depending on where you live, you will not have the same health concerns as someone who
lives in a different geographical region. Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this idea is
malaria-prone areas, which are usually tropical regions that foster a warm and damp environment in
which the mosquitos that can give people this disease can grew. Malaria is much less of a problem in
high-altitude deserts, for instance.

C. In some countries, geographical factors influence the health and well-being of the population in
very obvious ways. In many large cities, the wind is not strong enough to clear the air of the massive
amounts of smog and pollution that cause asthma, lung problems, eyesight issues and more in the
people who live there. Part of the problem is, of course, the massive number of cars being driven, in
addition to factories that run on coal power. The rapid industrialisation of some countries in recent
years has also led to the cutting down of forests to allow for the expansion of big cities, which makes it
even harder to fight the pollution with the fresh air that is produced by plants.

D. It is in situations like these that the field of health geography comes into its own. It is an
increasingly important area of study in a world where diseases like polio are re-emerging, respiratory
diseases continue to spread, and malaria-prone areas are still fighting to find a better cure. Health
geography is the combination of, on the one hand, knowledge regarding geography and methods used
to analyse and interpret geographical information, and on the other, the study of health, diseases and
healthcare practices around the world. The aim of this hybrid science is to create solutions for common
geography-based health problems. While people will always be prone to illness, the study of how
geography affects our health could lead to the eradication of certain illnesses, and the prevention of
others in the future. By understanding why and how we get sick, we can change the way we treat
illness and disease specific to certain geographical locations.

E. The geography of disease and ill health analyses the frequency with which certain diseases appear in
different parts of the world, and overlays the data with the geography of the region, to see if there
could be a correlation between the two. Health geographers also study factors that could make certain
individuals or a population more likely to be taken ill with a specific health concern or disease, as
compared with the population of another area. Health geographers in this field are usually trained as
healthcare workers, and have an understanding of basic epidemiology as it relates to the spread of
diseases among the population.

F. Researchers study the interactions between humans and their environment that could lead to illness
(such as asthma in places with high levels of pollution) and work to create a clear way of categorising
illnesses, diseases and epidemics into local and global scales. Health geographers can map the spread
of illnesses and attempt to identify the reasons behind an increase or decrease in illnesses, as they work
to find a way to halt the further spread or re-emergence of diseases in vulnerable populations.

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G. The second subcategory of health geography is the geography of healthcare provision. This group
studies the availability (of lack thereof) of healthcare resources to individuals and populations around
the world. In both developed and developing nations there is often a very large discrepancy between
the options available to people in different social classes, income brackets, and levels of education.
Individuals working in the area of the geography of healthcare provision attempt to assess the levels of
healthcare in the area (for instance, it may be very difficult for people to get medical attention because
there is a mountain between their village and the nearest hospital). These researchers are on the
frontline of making recommendations regarding policy to international organisations, local government
bodies and others.

H. The field of health geography is often overlooked, but it constitutes a huge area of need in the fields
of geography and healthcare. If we can understand how geography affects our health no matter where
in the world we are located, we can better treat disease, prevent illness, and keep people safe and well.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage has eight sections, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. an acceptance that not all diseases can be totally eliminated

2. examples of physical conditions caused by human behavior
3. a reference to classifying diseases on the basis of how far they extend geographically
4. reasons why the level of access to healthcare can vary within a country
5. a description of health geography as a mixture of different academic fields
6. a description of the type of area where a particular illness is rare

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 6
Obtaining Linguistic Data

A. Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully
planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one's mother
tongue carried out in an armchair at home.

B. In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data - an informant Informants are (ideally)
native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information
about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often,
when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity,
acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this
approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generative approach to linguistics.
But a linguist's personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other
linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective methods of enquiry, using non-linguists
as informants.

The latter procedure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or child speech.

C. Many factors must be considered when selecting informants - whether one is working with single
speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting,
small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are
important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of conversation
and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are
the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies,
scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to
be made about the best investigative techniques to use.

D. Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist's claims about the
language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate ('difficult' pieces of
speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy.
People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and sound quality can be poor. A
variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the 'observer's paradox' (how
to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Some recordings are made
without the speakers being aware of the fact - a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical
objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about
the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful
technique G is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language
style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).

E. An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist's problems, however. Speech is often unclear
and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer's
written comments on the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general, A
facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings
avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be
everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any additional commentary provided by an
observer.

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F. Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their
informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviours. With a bilingual
informant, or through use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques (‘How do you
say table in your language?'). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview
worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single
variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation,
for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also
several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution
frame (e.g. I_see a car), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction ('Is it possible to say / no
can see?').

G. A representative sample of language, compiled for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a
corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about frequency of usage, and it
provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some
corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are
extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particular linguistic
feature. The size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect,
process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few
minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis;
by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is
that all corpora, whatever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be
supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers of the language, through either
introspection or experimentation.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. the effect of recording on the way people talk

2. the importance of taking notes on body language
3. the fact that language is influenced by social situation
4. how informants can be helped to be less self-conscious
5. various methods that can be used to generate specific data

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 7
The Fruit Book

A. The book is called Fruit Trees and Useful Plants in the Lives of Amazonians, but is better known
simply as the “fruit book”. The second edition was produced at the request of politicians in western
Amazonia. Its blend of hard science and local knowledge on the use and trade of 35 native forest
species has been so well received (and well used) that no less a dignitary than Brazil’s environment
minister, Marina Silva, has written the foreword. “There is nothing else like the Shanley book,” says
Adalberto Verrisimo, director of the Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon. “It gives
science back to the poor, to the people who really need it.”

B. Shanley’s work on the book began a decade ago, with a plea for help from the Rural Workers’
Union of Paragominas, a Brazilian town whose prosperity is based on exploitation of timber. The
union realised that logging companies would soon be knocking on the doors of the caboclos, peasant
farmers living on the Rio Capim, an Amazon tributary in the Brazilian state of Para. Isolated and
illiterate, the caboclos would have little concept of the true value of their trees; communities
downstream had already sold off large blocks of forest for a pittance. “What they wanted to know was
how valuable the forests were,” recalls Shanley, then a researcher in the area for the Massachusetts-
based Woods Hole Research Centre.

C. The Rural Workers’ Union wanted to know whether harvesting wild fruits would make economic
sense in the Rio Capim. “There was a lot of interest in trading non-timber forest products (NTFPs),”
Shanley says. At the time, environmental groups and green-minded businesses were promoting the
idea. This was the view presented in a seminal paper, Valuation of an Amazonian Rainforest,
published in Nature in 1989. The researchers had calculated that revenues from the sale of fruits could
far exceed those from a one- off sale of trees to loggers. “The union was keen to discover whether it
made more sense conserving the forest for subsistence use and the possible sale of fruit, game and
medicinal plants, than selling trees for timber,” says Shanley. Whether it would work for the caboclos
was far from clear.

D. Although Shanley had been invited to work in the Rio Capim, some caboclos were suspicious.
“When Patricia asked if she could study my forest,” says Joao Fernando Moreira Brito, "my
neighbours said she was a foreigner who’d come to rob me of my trees." In the end, Moreira Brito, or
Mangueira as he is known, welcomed Shanley and worked on her study. His land, an hour's walk from
the Rio Capim, is almost entirely covered with primary forest. A study of this and other tracts of forest
selected by the communities enabled Shanley to identify three trees, found throughout the Amazon,
whose fruit was much favoured by the caboclos: bacuri (Platonia insignis), uxi (Endop- leura uchi) and
piquia (Cayocas villosum). The caboclos used their fruits, extracted oils, and knew what sort of
wildlife they attracted. But, in the face of aggressive tactics from the logging companies, they had no
measure of the trees' financial worth. The only way to find out, Shanley decided, was to start from
scratch with a scientific study. “From a scientific point of view, hardly anything was known about
these trees,” she says. But six years of field research yielded a mass of data on their flowering and
fruiting behaviour. During 1993 and 1994, 30 families weighed everything they used from the forest -
game, fruit, fibre, medicinal plants - and documented its source.

E. After three logging sales and a major fire in 1997, the researchers were also able to study the
ecosystem's reaction to logging and disturbance. They carried out a similar, though less exhaustive,
study in 1999, this time with 15 families. The changes were striking. Average annual household
consumption of forest fruit had fallen from 89 to 28 kilogrammes between 1993 and 1999. “What we
found,” says Shanley, “was that fruit collection could coexist with a certain amount of logging, but
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after the forest fire it dropped dramatically.” Over the same period, fibre use also dropped from around
20 to 4 kilogrammes. The fire and logging also changed the nature of the caboclo diet. In 1993 most
households ate game two or three times a month. By 1999 some were fortunate if they ate game more
than two or three times a year.

F. The loss of certain species of tree was especially significant. Shanley’s team persuaded local hunters
to weigh their catch, noting the trees under which the animals were caught. Over the year, they trapped
five species of game averaging 232 kilogrammes under piquia trees. Under copaiba, they caught just
two species averaging 63 kilogrammes; and under uxi, four species weighing 38 kilogrammes. At last,
the team was getting a handle on which trees were worth keeping, and which could reasonably be sold.
“This showed that selling piquia trees to loggers for a few dollars made little sense,” explains Shanley.
“Their local value lies in providing a prized fruit, as well as flowers which attract more game than any
other species.”

G. As a result of these studies, Shanley had to tell the Rural Workers’ Union of Paragominas that the
Nature thesis could not be applied wholesale to their community - harvesting NTFPs would not always
yield more than timber sales. Fruiting patterns of trees such as uxi were unpredictable, for example. In
1994, one household collected 3,654 uxi fruits; the following year, none at all.

H. This is not to say that wild fruit trees were unimportant. On the contrary, argues Shanley, they are
critical for subsistence, something that is often ignored in much of the current research on NTFPs,
which tends to focus on their commercial potential. Geography was another factor preventing the Rio
Capim caboclos from establishing a serious trade in wild fruit: villagers in remote areas could not
compete with communities collecting NTFPs close to urban markets, although they could sell them to
passing river boats.

I. But Shanley and her colleagues decided to do more than just report their results to the union.
Together with two of her research colleagues, Shanley wrote the fruit book. This, the Bible and a
publication on medicinal plants co-authored by Shanley and designed for people with minimal literacy
skills are about the only books you will see along this stretch of the Rio Capim. The first print ran to
only 3,000 copies, but the fruit book has been remarkably influential, and is used by colleges, peasant
unions, industries and the caboclos themselves. Its success is largely due to the fact that people with
poor literacy skills can understand much of the information it contains about the non-timber forest
products, thanks to its illustrations, anecdotes, stories and songs. “The book doesn’t tell people what to
do,” says Shanley, “but it does provide them with choices.” The caboclos who have used the book now
have a much better understanding of which trees to sell to the loggers, and which to protect.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage has nine paragraphs A-I.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. A description of Shanley’s initial data collection

2. Why a government official also contributes to the book
3. Reasons why the community asked Shanley to conduct the research
4. Reference to the starting point of her research
5. Two factors that alter food consumption patterns
6. Why the book is successful

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 8
The Return of Artificial Intelligence
It is becoming acceptable again to talk of computers performing human tasks such as problem-
solving and pattern-recognition.

A. After years in the wilderness, the term ‘artificial intelligence' (Al) seems poised to make a
comeback. Al was big in the 1980s but vanished in the 1990s. It re-entered public consciousness with
the release of Al, a movie about a robot boy. This has ignited public debate about Al, but the term is
also being used once more within the computer industry. Researchers, executives and marketing people
are now using the expression without irony or inverted commas. And it is not always hype. The term is
being applied, with some justification, to products that depend on technology that was originally
developed by Al researchers. Admittedly, the rehabilitation of the term has a long way to go, and some
firms still prefer to avoid using it. But the fact that others are starting to use it again suggests that Al
has moved on from being seen as an over- ambitious and under-achieving field of research.

B. The field was launched, and the term ‘artificial intelligence’ coined, at a conference in 1956,,by a
group of researchers that included Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Herbert Simon and Alan Newell,
all of whom went on to become leading figures in the field. The expression provided an attractive but
informative name for a research programme that encompassed such previously disparate fields as
operations research, cybernetics, logic and computer science. The goal they shared was an attempt to
capture or mimic human abilities using machines. That said, different groups of researchers attacked
different problems, from speech recognition to chess playing, in different ways; Al unified the field in
name only. But it was a term that captured the public imagination.

C. Most researchers agree that Al peaked around 1985. A public reared on science-fiction movies and
excited by the growing power of computers had high expectations. For years, Al researchers had
implied that a breakthrough was just around the corner. Marvin Minsky said in 1967 that within a
generation the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence' would be substantially solved. Prototypes of
medical-diagnosis programs and speech recognition software appeared to be making progress. It
proved to be a false dawn. Thinking computers and household robots failed to materialise, and a
backlash ensued. 'There was undue optimism in the early f 980s,’ says David Leake, a researcher at
Indiana University. ‘Then when people realised these were hard problems, there was retrenchment. By
the late 1980s, the term Al was being avoided by many researchers, who opted instead to align
themselves with specific sub-disciplines such as neural networks, agent technology, case-based
reasoning, and so on.’

D. Ironically, in some ways Al was a victim of its own success. Whenever an apparently mundane
problem was solved, such as building a system that could land an aircraft unattended, the problem was
deemed not to have been Al in the first place. ‘If it works, it can’t be Al,' as Dr Leake characterises it.
The effect of repeatedly moving the goal-posts in this way was that Al came to refer to 'blue-sky'
research that was still years away from commercialisation, Researchers joked that Al stood for 'almost
implemented’. Meanwhile, the technologies that made it once the market, such as speech recognition,
language translation and decision-support software, were no longer regarded as Al. Yet all three once
fell well within the umbrella of Al research.

E. But the tide may now be turning, according to Dr Leake. HNC Software of San Diego, backed by a
government agency, reckon chat their new approach to artificial intelligence is the most powerful and
promising approach ever discovered. HNC claim that their system, based on a duster of 30 processors,
could be used to spot camouflaged vehicles on a battlefield or extract a voice signal from a noisy
background - tasks humans can do well, but computers cannot. ‘Whether or not their technology lives
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up to the claims made for it, the fact that HNC are emphasising the use of Al is itself an interesting
development,' says Dr Leake.

F. Another factor that may boost the prospects for Al in the near future is that investors are now
looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate
themselves. In particular, the problem of information overload, exacerbated by the growth of e-mail
and the explosion in the number of web pages, means there are plenty of opportunities for new
technologies to help filter and categorise information - classic Al problems. That may mean that more
artificial intelligence companies will start to emerge to meet this challenge.

G. The 1969 film, 2001:A Space Odyssey, featured an intelligent computer called HAL 9000. As well
as understanding and speaking English, HAL could play chess and even learned to lipread. HAL thus
encapsulated the optimism of the 1960s that intelligent computers would be widespread by 2001. But
2001 has been and gone, and there is still no sign of a HAL-like computer. Individual systems can play
chess or transcribe speech, but a general theory of machine intelligence still remains elusive. It may be.
however, that the comparison with HAL no longer seems quite so Important, and Al can now be
judged by what it can do, rather than by how well it matches up to a 30-year-old science-fiction film.
‘People are beginning to realise that there are impressive things that these systems can do.’ says Dr
Leake hopefully.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. how Al might have a military impact

2. the fact that AI brings together a range of separate research areas
3. the reason why AI has become a common topic of conversation again
4. how AI could help deal with difficulties related to the amount of information available electronically
5. where the expression AI was first used

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 9
Last man standing

Some 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens beat other hominids to become the only surviving species.
Kate Ravilious reveals how we did it.

A. Today, there are over seven billion people living on Earth. No other species has exerted as much
influence over the planet as us. But turn the clock back 80,000 years and we were one of a number of
species roaming the Earth. Our own species. Homo sapiens (Latin for ’wise man'), was most successful
in Africa. In western Eurasia, the Neanderthals dominated, while Homo erectus may have lived in
Indonesia. Meanwhile, an unusual finger bone and tooth, discovered in Denisova cave in Siberia in
2008, have led scientists to believe that yet another human population - the Denisovans - may also
have been widespread across Asia. Somewhere along the line, these other human species died out,
leaving Homo sapiens as the sole survivor. So what made us the winners in the battle for survival?

B. Some 74.000 years ago, the Toba ‘supervolcano' on the Indonesian island of Sumatra erupted. The
scale of the event was so great that ash from the eruption was flung as far as eastern India, more than
2,000 kilometres away. Oxford archaeologist Mike Petraglia and his team have uncovered thousands of
stone tools buried underneath the Toba ash. The mix of hand axes and spear tips have led Petraglia to
speculate that Homo sapiens and Homo erectus were both living in eastern India prior to the Toba
eruption. Based on careful examination of the tools and dating of the sediment layers where they were
found. Petraglia and his team suggest that Homo sapiens arrived in eastern India around 78.000 years
ago. migrating out of Africa and across Arabia during a favourable climate period. After their arrival,
the simple tools belonging to Homo erectus seemed to lessen in number and eventually disappear
completely. 'We think that Homo sapiens had a more efficient hunting technology, which could have
given them the edge.' says Petraglia. 'Whether the eruption of Toba also played a role in the extinction
of the Homo erectus-like species is unclear to us.'

C. Some 45.000 years later, another fight for survival took place. This time, the location was Europe
and the protagonists were another species, the Neanderthals. They were a highly successful species that
dominated the European landscape for 300.000 years. Yet within just a few thousand years of the
arrival of Homo sapiens, their numbers plummeted. They eventually disappeared from the landscape
around 30.000 years ago. with their last known refuge being southern Iberia, including Gibraltar.
Initially. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived alongside each other and had no reason to compete. But
then Europe’s climate swung into a cold, inhospitable, dry phase. ‘Neanderthal and Homo sapiens
populations had to retreat to refugia (pockets of habitable land). This heightened competition between
the two groups,’ explains Chris Stringer, anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

D. Both species were strong and stockier than the average human today, but Neanderthals were
particularly robust. ‘Their skeletons show that they had broad shoulders and thick necks,' says Stringer.
‘Homo sapiens, on the other hand, had longer forearms, which undoubtedly enabled them to throw a
spear from some distance, with less danger and using relatively little energy,’ explains Stringer. This
long-range ability may have given Homo sapiens an advantage in hunting. When it came to keeping
warm. Homo sapiens had another skill: weaving and sewing. Archaeologists have uncovered simple
needles fashioned from ivory and bone alongside Homo sapiens, dating as far back as 35,000 years
ago. ‘Using this technology, we could use animal skins to make ourselves tents, warm clothes and fur
boots,’ says Stringer. In contrast. Neanderthals never seemed to master sewing skills, instead relying
on pinning skins together with thorns.

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E. A thirst for exploration provided Homo sapiens with another significant advantage over
Neanderthals. Objects such as shell beads and flint tools, discovered many miles from their source,
show that our ancestors travelled over large distances, in order to barter and exchange useful materials,
and share ideas and knowledge. By contrast. Neanderthals tended to keep themselves to themselves,
living in small groups. They misdirected their energies by only gathering resources from their
immediate surroundings and perhaps failing to discover new technologies outside their territory.

F. Some of these differences in behaviour may have emerged because the two species thought in
different ways. By comparing skull shapes, archaeologists have shown that Homo sapiens had a more
developed temporal lobe - the regions at the side of the brain, associated with listening, language and
long-term memory. 'We think that Homo sapiens had a significantly more complex language than
Neanderthals and were able to comprehend and discuss concepts such as the distant past and future.'
says Stringer. Penny Spikins, an archaeologist at the University of York, has recently suggested that
Homo sapiens may also have had a greater diversity of brain types than Neanderthals.

‘Our research indicates that high-precision tools, new hunting technologies and the development of
symbolic communication may all have come about because they were willing to include people with
"different" minds and specialised roles in their society,’ she explains. 'We see similar kinds of injuries
on male and female Neanderthal skeletons, implying there was no such division of labour,' says
Spikins.

G. Thus by around 30,000 years ago. many talents and traits were well established in Homo sapiens
societies but still absent from Neanderthal communities. Stringer thinks that the Neanderthals were just
living in the wrong place at the wrong time. 'They had to compete with Homo sapiens during a phase
of very unstable climate across Europe. During each rapid climate fluctuation, they may have suffered
greater losses of people than Homo sapiens, and thus were slowly worn down,’ he says. ‘If the climate
had remained stable throughout, they might still be here.’

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. a comparison of a range of physical features of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

2. reference to items that were once used for trade
3. mention of evidence for the existence of a previously unknown human species
4. mention of the part played by i.l fortune in the downfall of Neanderthal society
5. reference to the final geographical location of Nediidei tlials

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MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS – PRACTICE TEST 10
How to run a… Publisher and author David Harvey on what makes a good management book.

A. Prior to the Second World War, all the management books ever written could be comfortably
stacked on a couple of shelves. Today, you would need a sizeable library, with plenty of room for
expansion, to house them. The last few decades have seen the stream of new titles swell into a flood. In
1975, 771 business books were published. By 2000, the total for the year had risen to 3,203, and the
trend continues.

B. The growth in pubishing activity has followed the rise and rise of management to the point where it
constitutes a mini-industry in its own right. In the USA alone, the book market is worth over $lbn.
Management consultancies, professional bodies and business schools were part of this new
phenomenon, all sharing at least one common need: to get into print. Nor were they the only aspiring
authors. Inside stories by and about business leaders balanced the more straight-laced textbooks by
academics. How-to books by practising managers and business writers appeared on everything from
making a presentation to developing a business strategy. With this upsurge in output, it is not really
surprising that the quality is uneven.

C. Few people are probably in a better position to evaluate the management canon than Carol
Kennedy, a business journalist and author of Guide to the Management Gurus, an overview of the
world’s most influential management thinkers and their works. She is also the books editor of The
Director. Of course, it is normally the best of the bunch that are reviewed in the pages of The Director.
But from time to time, Kennedy is moved to use The Director’s precious column inches to warn
readers off certain books. Her recent review of The Leader’s Edge summed up her irritation with
authors who over-promise and under-deliver. The banality of the treatment of core competencies for
leaders, including the ‘competency of paying attention’, was a conceit too far in the context of a leaden
text. ‘Somewhere in this book,’ she wrote,‘there may be an idea worth reading and taking note of, but
my own competency of paying attention ran out on page 31.’ Her opinion of a good proportion of the
other books that never make it to the review pages is even more terse.‘Unreadable’ is her verdict.

D. Simon Caulkin, contributing editor of the Observer’s management page and former editor of
Management Today, has formed a similar opinion. A lot is pretty depressing, unimpressive stuff.’
Caulkin is philosophical about the inevitability of finding so much dross. Business books, he
says,‘range from total drivel to the ambitious stuff. Although the confusing thing is that the really
ambitious stuff can sometimes be drivel.’ Which leaves the question open as to why the subject of
management is such a literary wasteland. There are some possible explanations.

E. Despite the attempts of Frederick Taylor, the early twentieth-century founder of scientific
management, to establish a solid, rule-based foundation for the practice, management has come to be
seen as just as much an art as a science. Once psychologists like Abraham Maslow, behaviouralists and
social anthropologists persuaded business to look at management from a human perspective, the topic
became more multidimensional and complex. Add to that the requirement for management to reflect
the changing demands of the times, the impact of information technology and other factors, and it is
easy to understand why management is in a permanent state of confusion. There is a constant
requirement for reinterpretation, innovation and creative thinking: Caulkin’s ambitious stuff. For their
part, publishers continue to dream about finding the next big management idea, a topic given an airing
in Kennedy’s book. The Next Big Idea.

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F. Indirectly, it tracks one of the phenomena of the past 20 years or so: the management blockbusters
which work wonders for publishers’ profits and transform authors’ careers. Peters and Waterman’s In
Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies achieved spectacular success. So
did Michael Hammer and James Champy’s book. Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for
Business Revolution. Yet the early euphoria with which such books are greeted tends to wear off as the
basis for the claims starts to look less than solid. In the case of In Search of Excellence, it was the rapid
reversal of fortunes that turned several of the exemplar companies into basket cases. For Hammer’s
and Champy’s readers, disillusion dawned with the realisation that their slash-and-burn prescription for
reviving corporate fortunes caused more problems than it solved.

G. Yet one of the virtues of these books is that they could be understood.There is a whole class of
management texts that fail this basic test.‘Some management books are stuffed with jargon,’ says
Kennedy.‘Consultants are among the worst offenders.’ She believes there is a simple reason for this
flight from plain English.’They all use this jargon because they can’c think clearly. It disguises the
paucity of thought.’

H. By contrast, the management thinkers who have stood the test of time articulate their ideas in plain
English. Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the doyen of management thinkers, has written a steady
stream of influential books over half a century. ‘Drucker writes beautiful, dear prose.’ says Kennedy,
‘and his thoughts come through.’ He is among the handful of writers whose work, she believes,
transcends the specific interests of the management community. Caulkin also agrees that Drucker
reaches out to a wider readership. ‘What you get is a sense of the larger cultural background,’ he
says.‘That’s what you miss in so much management writing.’ Charles Handy, perhaps the most
successful UK business writer to command an international audience, is another rare example of a
writer with a message for the wider world.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. reasons for the deserved success of some books

2. reasons why managers feel the need for advice
3. a belief that management books are highly likely to be very poor
4. a reference to books nor considered worth reviewing
5. an example of a group of people who write particularly poor books

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ANSWER KEYS – MATCHING INFORMATION QUESTIONS
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. I 1. C 1. C 1. D 1. D 1. D 1. D 1. E 1. D 1. H
2. D 2. G 2. G 2. B 2. C 2. E 2. A 2. B 2. E 2. E
3. B 3. A 3. D 3. A 3. F 3. C 3. C 3. A 3. A 3. D
4. G 4. H 4. B 4. B 4. G 4. D 4. B 4. F 4. G 4. C
5. F 5. E 5. F 5. E 5. D 5. F 5. E 5. B 5. C 5. G
6. D 6. C 6. B 6. I

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